The French Prize Read Online Free PDF Page B

them a bit longer.”
    â€œYou’ll hang on to them till they blow out of their boltropes,” Tucker said, and in the dark Jack smiled.
    â€œI might yet, but only if I can figure a way for you to take the blame.”
    They said their good nights. Tucker and his men headed for the scuttles and their watch below, Jack’s went to their various stations: helm and forward lookout, the rest milling about amidships, waiting for orders. There was a good chance that the four tricks at the helm, requiring slight turns of the big wheel one way then the other, would be the most taxing part of the watch.
    Had it been daylight, Jack would have set the men to a half-dozen different tasks; tarring down the standing rigging, slushing the topmasts, end for ending the running rigging, mending sail, polishing brass, making up sword mats, and refreshing the chaffing gear; but as it was dark, and because he knew the men would work like dogs when called upon to do so, he let them stand easy. Or sit, as the case may be. Such was watch standing in the Caribbean.
    Asquith had the reputation of being a fair captain, and Biddlecomb a hard driver, a mate not shy about carrying sail, a man who knew his business but not one who sought authority through fear and brutality, as some did. The profit on that was that they had their pick of the seamen along the waterfront. Abigail had a small crew, but a good crew, and when it came to seamen, quality counted for considerably more than quantity.
    Jack took his place by the weather rail, looked down the length of the ship at the water rolling and curling off her rounded side, flashing with light as the phosphorus was churned up in her passing and stretching away in a long wake astern. He walked over and glanced at the compass, illuminated by a candle in the binnacle box. Northwest. John Burgess, the seaman at the helm, was holding her so steadily on course the compass card looked as if it was stuck in place.
    â€œHow does she feel, Burgess?”
    â€œFeels well, sir. Helm answers right and proper.”
    Jack nodded. He paced. He ran his eyes over the sails, and the time rolled past like the dark water moving under their keel.
    The first hints of dawn were starting to show themselves when Noah Maguire, once just another Irishman from Cork, now an able-bodied seaman from Philadelphia, a good man at sea but a fearsome drunk ashore, came ambling aft, turned the glass, took up the bell rope, and rang out four bells.
    â€œMaguire,” Jack called. “First light soon. Take this glass and up aloft with you.”
    Maguire responded with an “Aye,” took the telescope that Jack offered, and disappeared up the main shrouds. This was a precaution that his father had often told him about, how in the naval service in times of war they would have a lookout aloft at first light, to minimize the chance that the dawn might reveal some unhappy surprise, such as a powerful enemy in the offing. Indeed, according to his father the entire ship would go to quarters at dawn, just to be ready.
    Jack would not go that far. And of course there was no such thing as “quarters” in the merchant service, and since no merchantman carried any sort of weapons with which they might reasonably defend themselves, such a precaution would be pointless in the extreme. But in waters infested with French privateers, having a man aloft at dawn seemed a reasonable precaution.
    It was not long after Maguire had disappeared aloft that the first gray light began to spread along the deck. The masts, hatches, the fife rails and pumps, and forward, the windlass and the heel of the bowsprit slowly revealed themselves in the gathering dawn. The sky to the east took on a pinkish hue. Just forward of the mainmast Abigail sported a galley, housed in a deckhouse about the size of a generous privy, and now the first puffs of black smoke began chuffing from the galley’s stovepipe and whisking away forward and